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May 11, 2008 (The State - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Frenchie Skirts: Designer creates one gorgeous custom garment at a time

www.frenchieskirts.com

By ROBIN COWIE NALEPA -- rnalepa@thestate.com

Inside a studio with apple green walls, Frenchie Bunch listens to her messages.

One client calls about scheduling a fitting for her new maternity skirt.

Another invokes the names of her niece and best friend, both current Frenchie Skirts clients, in hopes she, too, can get in to see the young designer.

It's busy season -- horse races, weddings, spring. People need skirts and dresses. Frenchie notes the names and numbers at her desk.

The tall blonde walks past exquisite fabrics -- silk, organza, tulle, tweed, cotton, vintage lace, bold prints, embroidery -- hanging from two long racks and heads to the work area a few steps away.

Frenchie stands barefoot wearing a white T-shirt and a pale pink ruffled skirt she pulled from the sample rack that morning. She abandoned the heels to get to work.

She arranges a sheer piece of designer Anna Sui fabric on her large cutting table, lining up the edges with the table's grid, then pins in place a handmade pattern covered with her own penciled notations.

Unfurling her tape, she checks the measurements. Adjusts the pattern. Re-pins and measures again. Her brow furrows in concentration.

She inspects the numbers and alignment one last time before taking up a large pair of shiny silver shears. She cuts with purpose.

"An eighth of an inch can make all the difference," she says in a breathy voice.

At the sewing machine she whirs away. As the afternoon rolls by, she stitches seams, irons interfacing, inserts a zipper, creates darts, cuts a lining, snips threads.

Frenchie will soon deliver another one-of-a-kind, custom skirt to a satisfied customer. And in pleasing her client, she's learned to please herself with a fulfilling career she stitched together from a pattern all her own.

POLISHED AND PEDIGREED

If Frenchie were a fabric, she'd be raw silk. The opulent material is known for its elegance and flattering drape. Yet its imperfect weave gives it greater depth and durability than its more tightly-spun cousin.

Polished and pedigreed, when circumstance or client dictates, the attractive woman can be coolly patrician. She can do the who's who name-dropping dance with an elderly patron or discuss weddings, engagements and divorces attached to the local social calendar with a smile that doesn't always reach her eyes.

At other times, she easily drapes herself in a chair, ponytail askew and cuts up with her behemoth cat, Rags, or a 13-year-old client huffing about a bridesmaid dress.

Frenchie, 31, grew up in a prominent Forest Acres family with country club ties and deep South Carolina roots. Not too far back on the family tree are members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and an S.C. governor. Her father is a banker, her mother the curator at the Governor's Mansion.

As a child, Frenchie remembers rummaging through her baby clothes, sorting them by brand and hanging them to play store.

Her mother, Nancy Bunch, remembers her daughter playing dress up with her dolls and changing clothes as often as three times a day. Yet, she refused to be a Brownie "because she wouldn't wear the little brown outfits."

"She had a way of transforming things she didn't like," Bunch said.

In third grade, Frenchie ripped the hem out of a dress she didn't want to wear, one her mother had recently purchased.

"I didn't have a seam ripper but I could have used one," Frenchie said, smiling. "I was on restriction for weeks."

While in high school at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, Frenchie kept a journal in which she tracked her wardrobe choices so she didn't wear the same outfit within two weeks. At that time, Laura Ashley labels filled her closet.

In her freshman year of college, as debutante season approached, the young woman designed her own dress. She couldn't sew, so her parents hired someone to make it for her. She then wore it to five balls. (She was presented at three).

While attending the University of the South at Sewanee, a small private college in Tennessee, Frenchie further refined her style.

"... Frenchie was always dressed to the nines," wrote Caroline Coward, a Sewanee classmate, in an e-mail. "Understand that this was no small feat. ... While most students were forced to limit their shopping sprees to the pages of J. Crew and Patagonia catalogs, Frenchie traveled far -- and often -- to maintain her extensive wardrobe."

Her greatest challenge was finding items no one else owned. Ten to 15 years ago the options in Columbia were limited. Everyone dipped from the same fashion well. So Frenchie often shopped at small boutiques in Atlanta or Nashville.

After graduation, Frenchie returned to Columbia. She did the things expected of a woman her age and background: Junior League, tennis lessons, boards of several nonprofits. She dated. She worked as a paralegal in a local law firm.

IT STARTED WITH A SEWING CLASS

In her Shandon-area home, which she's rented for the past five years, Frenchie can walk to her dining room china closet and pull out the first skirt she ever sewed.

She points at the darts.

"They're upside down and backwards."

She crafted the skirt more than three years ago during a sewing class at Lightner's Sewing Center in St. Andrews. She decided to take the class when some favorite bed linens needed repairing.

She loved the class so much she quit her tennis lessons to focus more on sewing.

During the class she began making skirts for herself, then for family. She typed her class notes and made cheat sheets with step-by-step instructions.

"I was making skirts for me and all of a sudden everybody wanted one," Frenchie said. "I did it for family. It kind of went from there."

She took apart her own skirts to see how they were assembled and to come up with sizing formulas for waist, hips and stomach measurements.

"And to see why the expensive ones fit better versus the cheaper ones," she said.

The idea to dress women, regardless of age or size, in one-of-a-kind skirts came to Frenchie early one morning when she saw a friend out walking.

The friend needed "so much fashion help," thought Frenchie. A skirt soon followed.

While looking for someone to teach her the advanced sewing technique of invisible zippers, Frenchie met Eartha Saust at a local fabric store.

Saust agreed to help the young woman 20 years her junior.

When Frenchie presented her work to Saust, the more experienced seamstress remembers asking, "You going to do business with that skirt?"

The straight-shooting Saust, who'd been sewing for more than 45 years, began working with Frenchie to show her there is no shortcut to quality.

With Saust as her mentor, Frenchie learned her skirts "needed to be as pretty on the inside as they were on the outside." Their bond and friendship grew along with Saust's patience and Frenchie's sewing skills.

"She's come a long ways," Saust said recently.

Frenchie continued working full time as a paralegal even as she launched Frenchie Skirts. She turned her dining room into a work space. She sewed at night, on the weekends, before work and on her lunch hour. Fittings occurred at her home. Clients changed in her bedroom.

"And they kept coming back," she said. "I'm thankful, but amazed."

After about a year, juggling her job and her own business became too much. Frenchie gave up the steady paycheck to follow her heart.

RIGHT PEOPLE LAUNCHED BUSINESS

In the beginning Frenchie Skirts clients were people the young woman knew. Fortunately, she knew many of the right people.

In the same way smart businessmen and connected ol' boys have done for years, the young entrepreneur parlayed her abundant connections into paying customers.

One of those customers was Bitsey Box of Columbia, a family friend, whom Frenchie describes as always stylish, always "getting it."

On a recent spring afternoon, Box and her daughter arrived at the new home of Frenchie Skirts, a by-appointment-only studio on Devine Street.

Elizabeth Box, 13, bounced around the studio giving her enthusiastic approval to a cupcake print fabric, choosing a matching yellow trim with Frenchie's help. She was less enthusiastic about strawberries with black lace.

"Too old ladyish for me," said Elizabeth, who owns 10 Frenchie skirts.

Box owns considerably more Frenchie originals, "dozens more," she hedges with a smile. She especially likes the novelty Dick and Jane prints Frenchie picks up for her on buying trips in New York.

"I might come in for one skirt and come out with three just because I saw another fabric I liked," said Box, scanning the racks.

Prices for a Frenchie Skirts range from $130 to $320, depending on the fabric. Though the skirts are not inexpensive, they are far more reasonable than many designer brands and come with a guaranteed fit.

"I respect that people want to spend their hard-earned money on my products," Frenchie said. "It makes me work harder."

A core group of clients, like Box, purchase multiple skirts seasonally while a growing number of women are discovering Frenchie for special occasions, maternity wear and through her Internet site.

One reason for her success is that she listens to her clients, according to her mentor Saust.

"Some designers say 'It's my way or the highway,' but she sits down with them and listens and tries to accommodate," Saust said.

"I love that I was able to participate in the design of the skirt and that no one else has one like it," said first lady Jenny Sanford.

Sanford wore a Frenchie Skirts design to this year's First Lady's Easter Egg Hunt.

Optional styles, rise and length, along with fabric and trim choices give clients much to discuss during one-on-one appointments with the designer.

Dresses were added to Frenchie's line in spring 2007. And last fall, Frenchie gave her first trunk shows in Camden and Charlotte.

For three years Frenchie Skirts has absorbed Frenchie the person. She's been left with little time for other pursuits even ones she loves like gardening and cooking. Someday she'd like to get married, have a family, make a great biscotti.

"This is the first time in my life I loved something not because I was supposed to, but because I just loved it."

Reach Nalepa at (803) 771-8507.

To see more of The State, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.thestate.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The State, Columbia, S.C. Distributed by
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to
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Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Robin Cowie Nalepa

Copyright (C) 2008 The State, Columbia, S.C.

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